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The Best KULL Comic Ever: “Demon in a Silvered Glass”

The Best KULL Comic Ever: “Demon in a Silvered Glass”

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kullsmall-1Happy Birthday, Robert E. Howard…

I am a huge Conan fan, but I have to admit that I like Howard’s King Kull stories even better. The Kull tales are more poetic, more lyrical, more mystical … and they reveal more of Howard’s Shakespearean influence than any of his Conan tales.

All of those terrific Kull tales are collected in a terrific illustrated volume from Del Rey entitled Kull: Exile of Atlantis.  If you want the true Kull experience, this book has it all. Yet of all the Kull and Conan comics produced by Marvel Comics in the 70s and 80s, there is one that stands head-and-shoulders above them all: Bizarre Adventures #26, featuring Kull the Barbarian. John Bolton’s dark, lush artwork brought Kull, Brule, and the City of Wonders alive in a work of timeless excellence.

Kull always had it rougher than Conan in the comics world. When the fantastically talented Barry Windsor-Smith put his unique stamp on the Conan character in 1971’s Conan the Barbarian #1, he and writer Roy Thomas ensured it would become a Marvel mainstay. Yet when Marvel added a Kull the Conqueror comic a few years later, they weren’t lucky enough to strike gold again. Various artists did the Kull series, and despite a terrific run by Marie Severin and a couple of great Mike Ploog issues (and later work by Alfredo Alcala and Ernie Chan), the series never approached Conan in popularity or longevity. However, in 1981 King Kull finally got his due in a true masterpiece of sword-and-sorcery: “Demon in a Silvered Glass.”

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Better Late Than Never…

Better Late Than Never…

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71056_199372154485_5464068_nWell, with only about a week left to go in January, today I just received a copy of the December Realms of Fantasy.  You remember, the last one that Warren Lapine could afford to publish, originally available only as a download, but I guess he decided to have a last hurrah.  A February 2011 edition is due out soon from new publisher Damnation Books.

Though I recognize that media tie-ins have always been part of the magazine’s business plan, the less said about a Harry Potter cover, the better.  Four stories: “Queen of the Kanguellas” by Scott Dalrymple, “Maiden, Mother, Crone” by Anne Leckie & Rachel Swirsky, “The Banjo Singer” by Dennis Danvers and “Tools of the Devil” by Jerry Oltion.

I was never a big fan of the magazine, though I was sorry to hear it was going, and glad to hear that it is coming back.  Here’s hoping the third incarnation does the trick.

Of Joe Gores, Ace Atkins and Wrestling with Hammett’s Legend

Of Joe Gores, Ace Atkins and Wrestling with Hammett’s Legend

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4330071663_4e7a003ec4The recent passing of veteran mystery writer Joe Gores on the anniversary of Dashiell Hammett’s own death set me thinking about Hammett’s enduring legacy and continuing influence on detective fiction.

Gores was born too late to fight for a place in the Holy Trinity of hardboiled detective fiction alongside Hammett’s immediate heirs Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, but the influence of the man who did so much to transform hardboiled fiction was no less strong in Gores’ work.

While most commentators would agree that the DKA series was Gores’ crowning achievement, my own preference was for his 1975 novel, Hammett and his last book, 2009’s Spade & Archer.

Gores’ death led me to pick up Ace Atkins’ 2009 novel, Devil’s Garden. Atkins’ book is a semi-fictionalized account of Hammett’s real-life involvement as a Pinketeron operative gathering evidence for the scandalous Fatty Arbuckle trial in 1921.

devilsgardeninside-198x300Thirty-five years earlier, Gores had likewise fictionalized Hammett’s Pinkerton days when he immersed himself in real and imagined political corruption in Roaring Twenties San Francisco in his novel, Hammett.

When granted the honor of penning a prequel to The Maltese Falcon, Gores later drew heavily on Hammett’s own experiences as a Pinkerton to fill in Sam Spade’s back story. Atkins has much in common with Gores in that both men are natural writers who can easily make one envious of their prodigious talent and, at times, frustrated that they aren’t quite as perfect as you wish them to be.

No matter how many times I’ve read Hammett’s five novels and the posthumous collections of his short fiction, I never cease to be amazed at his perfection. Chandler’s remark that Hammett repeatedly wrote scenes that struck readers as wholly original is not mere hyperbole; it still rings true today despite the endless parodies and imitations. It is also what makes following in his footsteps so difficult.

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Deathless, The Comic

Deathless, The Comic

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deathless2

Last year, I had the honor of reading Catherynne M. Valente’s newest book Deathless while it was still in its drafty stages.

It’s that wonderful old story of Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless, only it’s set in Revolutionary Russia, and then all whammied up with Valente magic and spat back out like a beautiful bullet, and wow!

And now it’s about to come out!

In celebration of this, Tor.com has put Deathless: The House Committee, a comic released in limited edition at Arisia last week, onto its website, to be read in its entirety.

Check it out! It’s really beautiful!

And, in my opinion, Deathless is the best thing Valente has ever written. She just keeps getting better and better, but this one takes a really big Black Russian Cake!

The book is, in fact, available for pre-order.

A Talk with Amal El-Mohtar

A Talk with Amal El-Mohtar

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bghoneyWhen you taste honey, do you think of ravenfolk, the wicked and the lovely? Do you find sex, death and trickery on your tongue? Ms. Amal El-Mohtar does. Amal was given 28 vials of honey. She tasted one vial per day over the course of one month and wrote down her impressions – some days in prose, others in poetry. These writings have been published as The Honey Month.

Seriously, you should buy the book for “Day 27: Leatherwood Honey” alone. It made me gasp. Never mind “Day 11: Blackberry Honey” wherein the universe reminded me what it’s like to have a poem bust open a heart ventricle and fill it with breath-catching melancholy.

Black Gate found Amal wandering in our godswood. We yelled, “HALT, TRESPASSER!” not knowing who she was. As we ran at her ready to tackle, she pulled an ancient blade from behind her back and, well, hmm, embarrassing though it be, we were unarmed. As it’s our swindling nature to distract folks with words we sat down and began to ask her questions. Ms. El-Mohtar very kindly answered these instead of chopping off our heads and we forgave her for trespassing in our godswood.

Here is our chat with Amal El-Mohtar:

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Catherine Mary Stewart

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Catherine Mary Stewart

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image015The gentlemen staff of Black Gate tirelessly seeks out ways to entertain you. There have been cross-country zeppelin rides and waist-high stacks of manuscripts to pour over, seeking only the crème de la crème of stories to tell and the most interesting tidbits to pass along. The boys often go for days without showering, living only on beer and pizza while spending countless, sleepless hours reading the latest comics or playing the latest video games; all for your enjoyment and approval. During these marathon sessions of creativity, toilet sets are left up and the communal fridge sprouts intricate science experiments, which I am sure have some unobvious value.

It’s exhausting to watch, really.

But here in the underground bunker of Goth Chick News, we’re generally just concerned with the tequila supply and whether plugging in the blender while five Xboxes are going upstairs will cause a breaker to trip.

That is, until two weeks ago.

It was then that I brought you a collection of favorite scary movies from the 80’s, gleaned from an outwardly cool-looking, mixed group of New Years Eve revelers; with a goal to either remind you of a picture you’d forgotten, or tempt you into something classic that you may never have heard of.

As it turns out, plenty of you have heard of Catherine Mary Stewart.

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Art Evolution 19: RK Post

Art Evolution 19: RK Post

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Art evolves, one generation of role-players leading into the next and each attaches it’s best memories to the artists that defined their games of choice. This ongoing series continues, but if you’ve missed previous entries they can be found here.

deadlands-doomtown-or-bust-255With the help of Wizards of the Coast I had my ‘Caldwell Lyssa’, and the weeks for the project were growing short. These final days became the most trying for me as artists started to hedge, deadlines were missed, and suddenly I faced the possibility that I might not get twenty artists when I was assured only months before that I’d have twenty-five.

Still, with every prick of a thorny dropout, there were those who provided a silver lining. Out there among the countless catalogues of incredible gaming work there were some artists who simply smiled and said ‘when do you need it’.

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Goblin Fruit: Winter 2011

Goblin Fruit: Winter 2011

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"Come buy, come buy!"
"Come buy, come buy!"

Do you remember Amal El-Mohtar? Poet, writer, Black Gate blogger?

Well! As I may have mentioned once or twice, she and Jessica P. Wick (who turns back into a mermaid when you spray her with a hose) co-edit a ‘zine called Goblin Fruit, which publishes “poetry of the fantastical.”

And… THE WINTER ISSUE IS LIVE!!! It’s ALIVE, I tell you! With (O my leaping lords of the great down under), soul-salivating art by Melbourne’s Omi Fam!

If we go by the art alone, this issue would be like a wolf pelt stuffed with sentient diamonds, or a lantern carved from a human skull. But I know the names of some of the poets (Rose Lemberg of Stone Telling, Leah Bobet of Ideomancer, Mari Ness of the Oz Blog at Tor.com, Loreen Heneghan, Christopher W. Clark, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Michelle Muenzler, and Neile Graham), therefore the possibilities for this issue are as endless as a winter’s night.

Go check it out! If you dare.

We last covered Goblin Fruit in our three-part review of the magazine.

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

Howard Andrew Jones Reviews HeroScape

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Heroscape expansion packs

In 2004, I made my first trip to GenCon and was overwhelmed by the experience. I don’t remember much about the specific tables I visited, but I do remember coming across this new game, HeroScape, which applied a modular style to tactical war gaming – not just in the building of the army (which was usually modular in some sense), but in the design of the playing surface and terrain.

Just as Howard describes himself below, I was also the sort of person who always chose storytelling games over wargames. I had bought some Warhammer units, but had spent so much time painting them that I’d never actually gotten around to playing the game … and even if I had, the lack of terrain would have annoyed me.

With HeroScape, all of these elements came packaged together in a master set, and you could expand on the experience easily enough with various expansion packs. Six years later, Howard describes his experience with the current incarnation of the game.

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“And the Score at the Text Break Is…” My Favorite Soundtracks for Writing

“And the Score at the Text Break Is…” My Favorite Soundtracks for Writing

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jerry-goldsmith-conductsI always write with music playing. That’s not much of an admission. A few writers prefer to work in silence, but most that I have talked to say that they need to have music in the background while they work at their keyboards or notebooks. Some writers like to listen with headphones on as an extra seal against the rest of the world, but I only do that if I’m working in a public environment. Otherwise, I let my massively stuffed iPod play through the huge speakers in my apartment to surround me with music as I work.

Just as every writer has a different method of writing, so does every writer have difference musical preferences for underscoring his or her work. But “underscore” is the key word, since I have discovered that film music is perhaps the number one choice for music to write by. One reason for this is that film scores usually lack lyrics (at least in English; Latin chanting is a standby, Ave Satani!) that can distract from the author’s own words. Film music, regardless of its style, also inherently has a dramatic feel that parallels how writers often think.

The situation is a bit different for me. I do listen to film scores while writing, but that’s because film music is my favorite form of music. I have listened to film scores more than any other type of music since high school, when I turned into an avid collector of soundtrack albums. My collection is now somewhere in the thousands, and ranges in obscurity from John Williams’s Star Wars scores to films nobody remembers except film score collectors (The Cassandra Crossing). The chronological scope of my collection is just as wide, from silent movie scores to films released a few weeks ago. Film music is one of my deep passions.

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